Women Mathematicians and NMAH Collections

Sister Helen Sullivan: A College Teacher and More

Sister M. Helen Sullivan (1907-1998)represents the large number of American women with PhD’s in mathematics whose names and accomplishments are not well known within much of the mathematics community. Sullivan, like many other mathematicians, was a college teacher whose only mathematical research publication was her dissertation but who wrote about, among other subjects, the teaching of mathematics. She interacted with her own students as well as other students and mathematicians through her involvement in Kappa Mu Epsilon, a mathematical honor society, and on committees and panels of professional organizations that related to teaching.

Sullivan also represents the group of Catholic nuns who earned PhD’s in mathematics from Catholic University. During the 1930s, Catholic awarded more PhD’s in mathematics to American women, twelve (eleven of them nuns), than any other school except the University of Chicago, which awarded twenty-four. Catholic nuns were well represented at the August 1981 honoring women who received PhD’s in mathematics before World War II. Of the fifteen women who attended three were women religious and all had received PhD’s from Catholic: Sister Leonarda Burke in 1931, Sullivan in 1934, and Sister Elizabeth Frisch in 1940. All three shared the same dissertation advisor, Aubrey E. Landry. Landry advised twenty-eight doctoral students, eighteen of whom were women. Landry’s only woman student who was not a nun was Euphemia Lofton Haynes who, in 1943, became the first African-American woman to receive a PhD in mathematics.

In April 1981 in Springfield, Missouri, Kappa Mu Epsilon celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. At this celebration KME, a mathematics honor society with chapters at institutions that emphasize undergraduate mathematics programs, named fifty members as Distinguished Members. Sister Helen Sullivan was one of those so honored.

In about 1936 Sister Helen Sullivan organized Euclid’s Circle, a mathematics club at Mount St. Scholastica College. In 1940 she founded the Kansas Gamma Chapter of Kappa Mu Epsilon there. Sullivan often served as the faculty sponsor of her local chapter of KME, and in 1967 the alumnae of that chapter established the Sister Helen Sullivan scholarship in her honor. On the national level Sullivan served as KME’s historian in the years 1943–47, and as an assistant editor of its journal, The Pentagon, during those years and again from 1961–70.

Sister M. Helen Sullivan donated items to the Smithsonian on the occasion of the August 31, 1981, meeting honoring American women in mathematics. Among these materials were several of her publications.

1993.3019.06.01. Her doctoral dissertation: The Number and Reality of the Non-Self-Symmetric Quadrilaterals In-and-Circumscribed to the Rational Unicuspidal Quartic with a Line of Symmetry, (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America, 1934).

1993.3019.06.02. Typewritten and bound text: The Christian Approach to Science: A Philosophic Integration for Science Majors in Liberal Arts Colleges. This text was used in a class Sullivan taught at Loyola University during the summer of 1949.

1993.3019.06.03. Published book: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Natural and Mathematical Sciences, (New York: Vantage Press, Inc., 1952).

1993.3019.06.04. Spiral-bound copy of her published book An Introduction to the Philosophy of Natural and Mathematical Sciences (1993.3019.06.03) with “Additional Suggested Readings and Bibliography (Revised List – 1960).”

1993.3019.06.05. Carbon copy of a typescript, “Undergraduate Research in Mathematics.” Sullivan presented this paper at a meeting of the American Benedictine Academy in Canon City, Colorado, August 1961.

1993.3019.06.06. Carbon copy of a typescript, “Undergraduate Research in Mathematics in Catholic Colleges for Women.” Sullivan presented the paper at a meeting of the American Benedictine Academy in St. Josesph, Minnesota, August 1965.

1993.3019.06.07. Copy of a typescript with a removable hard cover, “Geometric Transformations.” A unit produced by the College Geometry Project, Minnesota School Mathematics and Science Center, University of Minnesota, under a grant from the National Science Foundation, August 1966.

1993.3019.06.08. Syllabus for a course, MA 465 Modern Geometry, taught by Sullivan at Mount St. Scholastica College during the first semester of the academic year 1969–70.

1993.3019.06.09. Copy of an article, “Catholicism in Ireland, As I See It,” The Furrow 22 (Fall 1971): 615-21. This was published in an Irish journal shortly after Sister Helen Sullivan spent a sabbatical year at University College, Galway.